1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image correction apparatus and method that corrects an input image.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a camera having a wide dynamic range, i.e., a so-called wide dynamic range camera, capable of clearly photographing both a very bright object and a dark object existing at the same time in the same angle of view is attracting attention.
To enable photographing with such a wide dynamic range, a dodging process can be performed in a dark room for silver-halide photography. There is available a technique (hereinafter, referred to as “digital dodging”) which achieves the dodging process by digital image processing to correct an object having a brightness difference, particularly, a backlit object. A conventional art relating to the digital dodging process is discussed in, for example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2006/0045377. In U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2006/0045377, as an area determination image for determining coefficients for performing a correction, an image is generated, from which a luminance component is extracted, and which is reduced and subsequently filtered through a low-pass filter, and enlarged up to the original size.
In the conventional art described above, if fractions of pixels appear in edges of an image during the reduction processing, there is a problem that the deviation of pixel position may become large in enlargement processing when the pixel data of fraction portions is discarded.